


you got me gunning (pull my trigger)

by dadvans



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Knotting, M/M, Mpreg, Omega Verse
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-30
Updated: 2017-02-21
Packaged: 2018-09-13 09:37:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,710
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9118060
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dadvans/pseuds/dadvans
Summary: “I don’t think anyone’s seen someone skate like Victor Nikiforov,” Yuuko agrees kindly.  “In the Juniors, no one could catch up to him.  His coach has said he’s untameable.”“Good,” Yuuri says.  He feels fairly mature at age twelve for how he sees biological markers, although he tries not to think he’s just internalized the disconnect he has with his own.  “You shouldn’t cage up someone like him just because he's an omega."He thinks, I hope no one ever tames Victor Nikiforov.  He thinks, I hope no one ever keeps Victor Nikiforov off the ice.  He thinks, if I were Victor Nikiforov’s mate, I would never try to tame him.  He thinks, Victor Nikiforov belongs to the ice more than he could ever belong to anyone else.  He thinks, I would belong to Victor Nikiforov before he ever belonged to me.:: or, Victor Nikiforov is considered untouchable as an omega, and Yuuri Katsuki is considered a sad excuse for an alpha, and maybe that's why they work so well.





	1. Chapter 1

  
Yuuko shows Yuuri her recording of Victor Nikiforov’s senior debut at Skate America one day after practice, and it takes Yuuri rewinding the performance three times and rewatching it over and over before she offers to let him borrow the tape indefinitely.  

“He’s just,” Yuuri says shyly, staring over her shoulder at the frozen frame of Victor, eyes closed, head facing the ceiling, ethereal.  “I’ve never seen an omega skate like that before.”  

Yuuri’s an alpha, and even he can’t skate with a fraction of the defiance or grace that Victor showcases effortlessly--although, Yuuri has wondered if his presenting as alpha hasn’t always been some biological fluke or cosmic joke.  The point is, omegas in figure skating have always been delicate will-o’-the-wisps, and everything in Victor’s performance both encapsulates that and challenges that; he’s sharp edges, fluid movements, high endurance step sequences with even higher jumps that make him look weightless.  He’s the most beautiful thing Yuuri’s ever seen.  

“I don’t think anyone’s seen someone skate like Victor Nikiforov,” Yuuko agrees kindly.  “In the Juniors, no one could catch up to him.  His coach has said he’s untameable.”

“Good,” Yuuri says.  He feels fairly mature at age twelve for how he sees biological markers, although he tries not to think he’s just internalized the disconnect he has with his own.  “You, you shouldn’t cage up something like him.

He thinks, I hope no one ever tames Victor Nikiforov.  He thinks, I hope no one ever keeps Victor Nikiforov off the ice.  He thinks, I hope Victor Nikiforov never finds his mate.  He thinks, if I were Victor Nikiforov’s mate, I would never try to tame him.  He thinks, Victor Nikiforov belongs to the ice more than he could ever belong to anyone else.  He thinks, I would belong to Victor Nikiforov before he ever belonged to me.  


* * *

  
Yuuri Katsuki has three of his thirteen shirt buttons done up, and they’re all clumsily pushed through the wrong holes.  He’s not wearing pants, just black briefs that showcase his strong thighs and the sharp cut of his calves.  He’s drooling onto the lapel of Victor’s best suit.

“Can’t you smell it?” He asks, unfocused eyes looking up at Victor, and yeah, Victor can; underneath the copper-sheet metal smell of alcohol, underneath Yuuri’s sweat and uninhibited alpha pheromones leaking happily everywhere is the smell of _mate_ , the smell of _mine_.  Yuuri leans in further, a possessive hand sliding up underneath Victor’s suit jacket to rest at the small of his back in a way that makes Victor feel faintly slick between his thighs.  “You’re my mate, Victor.”

 

* * *

 

“‘Katsudon is my eros,’” Yuri repeats, glancing at Victor mockingly across from the chabudai.  He leans onto the pillow next to him, still warm from where Yuuri had been sitting a few minutes ago.  It smells like him, and Yuri takes pleasure in the way Victor stiffens as he casually leans into it like an act of possession.  “You’re wasting your time.”  

“Oh?” Victor asks, leaning forward on the table, as if waiting to be enlightened.

“It’s your biological clock going off, telling you need to get knocked up,” Yuri continues.  He picks at one of Yuuri’s leftover peppers, even though it feels wrong, just to watch the way Victor tenses, see how Victor’s eyes track his fingers touching all the things he shouldn’t.  They’re both omegas; it’s not proper, but Yuri’s at the age where he feels like his designation is more of a societal curse than biology and tries to rebel.  Victor used to be like that too.  “I can’t believe out of all the alphas, this is the one that you try to seduce.  And with making his routine ‘eros’?  It’s pathetic.  You might as well be in heat, dragging your ass on the floor after him to the rink, begging him to fuck you.”

“You seem to know so much for someone so young,” Victor says, his tone a little too serious.  He’s still smiling, but he looks dangerous.  “I don’t understand why you’re coming to me for help with anything.”

“I’m not saying--” Yuri tries, stops, drops the pepper like it burned him.  He tries again, “I’m saying you’re wasting your time here.  With him.”

“You came an awful long way just to let me know I’m wasting my time here,” Victor continues.  Yuri hates it.  He hates that Victor always talks indirectly, like he only knows how to speak in riddles.  On the ice, and off, and with him, and with Yuuri--Yuri isn’t sure if it’s Victor’s way of protecting himself, or if he just has spent so much time in the spotlight that he’s forgotten how to take off his public persona and be an actual human being.  Either way, it’s frustrating as his student, and it’s frustrating as his colleague, and it’s frustrating as someone who has to watch him try to sell himself to a clueless waste of an alpha who isn’t worth his time or efforts.  Victor has always been so much more than--than _this_.

“Fine,” Yuri spits out, pushing himself up from the table finally.  “Fine, I’m young, and I don’t know anything.  Keep telling yourself that.  But after I beat him at the Onsen on Ice, you’ll see exactly how mediocre of a mate you’ve picked for yourself.  And you’ll come back to Russia.”

“I look forward to it,” Victor says, and it’s everything in Yuri’s power not to kick the table up and knocking the insincere smile off his face.  
 

* * *

  
You don’t pick your mate, though.  Victor wonders if you did, if he would have still picked Yuuri Katsuki.

He thinks, yes.  Takes in the way Yuuri’s back stretches back into an Ina Bauer, like a perfect bow, the empathy with which he skates, the way that he channels music into perfect sequences and angles and lines and curves.  He’s never seen an alpha skate like Yuuri Katsuki skates.  Of course Victor still would pick him.  


* * *

  
His heat hits him in the middle of the night after Yuuri takes silver at the Cup of China.  

It’s been a decade since he’s experienced a full blown heat.  The suppressants he’s been on ever since he started skating in the senior division have always muted his heats with a cotton softness. They’ve never fully gone away, but he’s been able to function and communicate like a normal person during them; go out in public without leaking through the seat of his pants, go to practice without pressing himself flush against the ice, needy for the relief of it melting against his skin.  He’s let himself go off the suppressants since he stopped competing, because he hasn’t needed to maintain his competitive shape, and maybe-- well, he’s let himself think lying awake in Russia, and then slowly forget those small, late night thoughts after spending months in Hasetsu, about what he wants.  

He didn’t expect his first heat off suppressants to come roaring back as overwhelming as it does.  Maybe he’s forgotten how they used to be when he was young.  Maybe he thought they would get less intense with age, just like how feelings and experiences feel more worn in with age.  Maybe everything with Yuuri Katsuki is just like the first time, intense and visceral and undeniable.  

“Yuuri,” he says, softly.  Yuuri’s lying next to him, nosing against his neck in his sleep.  They fell asleep in the same bed kissing, still fully clothed.  It had been sweet.  He says again, “Yuuri.”

“Mmnh,” Yuuri says, blinking his eyes open.  His breath is hot against Victor’s already too-hot skin.  It takes a second for the smell to hit Yuuri as Victor lies completely still and tries not to shift, tries not to rock into where he knows he’s soaked through and aching, tries not to draw attention to it.  “Victor?  Are you--you’re--”

“I am,” Victor says.  He’s right at the beginning, where he can still navigate his surroundings and not lose himself to the _need_.  He doesn’t know what else to say.  He’s never negotiated a heat with anyone else before, was always too young when they were this present.  And he’s wanted--he wants Yuuri to be here, to take him and claim him and _fill him_ , but he never actually got around to asking Yuuri if he’d wanted that too, even if they’re mates, even if Yuuri had drunkenly said so one night almost a year ago.  And God, he smells so good, he smells like he belongs inside Victor forever until the end of time, and Victor is starting to have trouble seeing past how badly he wants and wants and wants.  He tries to find something to say, but all he can say is, “Yuuri.”

“Do you need me to call someone?  Get you to a, a, a heat clinic?  Victor,” he says, pushing himself up.  His pupils are already blown wide, and he’s shaking.  There’s something about the way that he says Victor’s name that feels like a wave, licking up his chest, washing against him and receding.  And then there’s something pained under the way he asks, “Do you need me to leave?”

“No,” Victor says, reaching out to grab him by the too-big undershirt he crawled into bed in.  He curls the fabric in his fist and pulls Yuuri back toward him.  “Please don’t leave.”

“Victor, if I stay,” Yuuri says, and he’s already leaning forward, planting his hands on each side of Victor’s ribs.  “I’m an alpha, and you’re well, you’re _you_ , and there’s no way I can stay in control for very long.”

“Don’t,” Victor says.  “Lose control.  I want you to.  I want this.  Don’t you trust me, Yuuri?”

He thinks about kissing Yuuri a few hours ago, and he almost chokes on the want for it, the way that Yuuri did so tenderly, experimentally, how he put a hesitant hand on Victor’s stomach, how nice it felt.  

“Not like this,” Yuuri says.  “You’re in heat.  You don’t know what you want.”

“You,” Victor says, and it comes bitten out and desperate.  “I’ve wanted you since the moment I met you.  I’ve always known it was you from the beginning.”

“Oh,” Yuuri says.  He says it so softly.  Did he really not know?  “Really?”

“Please,” Victor says.  He thinks about Yuuri’s mouth, Yuuri’s hands, how good it would feel if he reached down between Victor’s sticky, slick thighs and curled four fingers inside him.  Yuuri squints at him, half-blind, like he’s trying to see through him.  

“Okay,” Yuuri says, finally leaning down, _finally_.  He presses his face into the curve of Victor’s neck again and just breathes in, shuddering on the exhale.  He noses up Victor’s jaw, rubs their cheeks together and breathes in and out shakily again into Victor’s ear, licking tentatively at Victor’s earlobe.  It’s a delicate series of movements, like Yuuri always is, but it knocks the wind out of Victor.  Victor finally rocks his hips forward, feeling the sopping wet mess of his own briefs and the sheets underneath cool against the backs of his thighs, and it’s everything to not roll over on top of Yuuri and ride him until the sunset, white knuckles on the high headboard.  “Yeah.”

Victor hums satisfied into his mouth when Yuuri kisses him, licking into him hungrily, trying to chase the sweet, milky way he tastes.  Yuuri gets his hands under Victor’s shirt, and they shake as if he’s using every last ounce of self restraint to not just tear it off over Victor’s head.  Victor could do without the teasing, but maybe Yuuri wants it, and Victor can spare the last restrained minutes of his heat to introduce himself to Yuuri again and let Yuuri take his time pulling him apart, as long as he stays buried inside Victor afterwards.  Yuuri lets his fingers trace up to Victor’s nipples and pinch them curiously with a thumb and knuckle, and he lets out a gasp.

“What are you thinking?” Victor asks, head swarming with the answer he already knows, but he wants to hear Yuuri say it, needs to hear Yuuri say it, wants and needs so much of Yuuri.

“Thinking,” Yuuri says, wet mouth against his jaw, “these, swollen, wet.  When you’re--when I--”

“What are you going to do to me, Yuuri?” Victor asks, as teasingly as he can manage.  Yuuri gasps and thrusts against his thigh, already hard and thick and eager.  His want is almost as heavy in the air as Victor’s own, and Victor has no idea how he shows such control.  

“Gonna make you mine,” Yuuri says, rolling Victor’s shirt off finally, and biting into his chest delicately enough to not leave a mark.  Victor wants to be marked.  He doesn’t want to just be threatened with a good time.  “Gonna, gonna claim you, and everyone will know, Victor, everyone will see you and they’ll know you’re mine, they’re gonna see you, and,” he kisses Victor’s sternum, his stomach, his hip as he lowers himself down to peel back Victor’s ruined briefs, “they’re gonna know I’m your alpha, that I claimed you for myself, that I put myself inside you, that you’re gonna have my child.”

And that’s where things start to blur together.  Victor’s cock springs out into the open air, and Yuuri presses his mouth to the base of it lovingly, before biting his way down Victor’s thighs and dragging his tongue cat-like as he shoulders Victor’s legs up to get to the drenched, throbbing core of him.  Words fail Victor, feeling Yuuri lap unashamed at his hole where he’s leaking syrupy wet and wild into his mouth.  Yuuri moans into it too, breathing in the scent of him, and when Victor looks down he sees Yuuri’s eyes are closed with the bliss of coming home.  

“You taste amazing, Victor,” Yuuri says, gasping as he pulls himself away, as if by force.  His mouth is glistening with Victor’s slick as he kisses the side of Victor’s kneecap and adjusts himself, crawling clumsily out of his own briefs.  Victor’s seen Yuuri exposed in the hot springs enough, but he’s never seen Yuuri like this, dick dark and befitting an alpha, eagerly wet at the tip.  “I could spend your entire heat just eating you out.”

It’s like Yuuri is testing him, and it’s too much.  Victor springs forward and knocks them both backwards so he’s suddenly straddling Yuuri and crawling over him.  Yuuri just laughs and looks up at him adoringly, reaching forward to hold his dick up and coax Victor back over it.  When Victor rolls back, just the tip of Yuuri there to greet him at his hole is enough to wring another moan out of him.  He slowly lets him sink down onto Yuuri, the girth of him agonizingly good and fulfilling, until he’s down to Yuuri’s hilt.  Yuuri gives a gentle thrust upward, and the noise that comes out of Victor is sharp like a laugh punched out of him.  It’s like a lightning crawling up his spine, and Victor rides into it, trying to get Yuuri deeper.  Yuuri pushes himself up and suddenly he’s got his arms around Victor, Victor in his lap and full of him, their chests slick with sweat and pressed together.

“I just need you as close as possible,” Yuuri says, panting, gripping up for Victor’s shoulders, for anything to hold Victor down and fuck up into him and encourage the wet, rough sound of their thighs slapping, of Victor being thoroughly opened up and filled with him.  Victor pants _please_ s, pants _more_ s, and Yuuri growls in response like a challenge, biting at the skin above his heart as if to say, _mine_ , as if to say, _this belongs to me_.  It does, Victor thinks wildly, delirious with how full he feels, how incredible Yuuri feels stretching him out and sliding into him over and over.  

“Not close enough,” Victor says blindly.  Yuuri’s clawing at his back, nails digging in as he loses his grip with the sweat, and still driving deep up to meet him as he rocks his hips desperately.  “Need more.  Need more, Yuuri, I need, please, I need--”

Yuuri’s stronger than he looks.  It could be the strength training, it could be him falling into his rut, whatever it is, Victor is so beyond questioning it when Yuuri drags his hands down to grab Victor’s ass and first squeeze--they both groan--and then push Victor back, while getting to his knees to lift Victor up against the headboard.

“Get your thighs,” Yuuri says, something wonderful and assertive overcoming his voice as he tries to prop Victor’s legs over his shoulders while still holding onto his ass.  Victor, even rapidly falling deeper and deeper in the fugue of heat, manages to do what Yuuri’s trying to ask of him, gets his legs over Yuuri’s shoulders so Yuuri can fuck him into the headboard, the _wham wham wham_ of wood against the wall just encouraging him to drive harder, dig deeper.  Victor’s eyes roll back into his head as his own eager dick gets caught between them, the friction making his toes curl.  Yuuri says, “good, good, Victor, you’re so good.  You need more?”

“Yes,” Victor begs, wrapping his arms around Yuuri’s neck, still so needy and empty and craving the friction, craving Yuuri’s marks all over his body, Yuuri’s fingerprints bruised into his skin and the knot that will fill him repeatedly.  

“I got you,” Yuuri says. “Oh God, I can feel it.  I can--’m gonna take care of you, Victor, I promise, I’ll give you whatever you need.”

With each thrust, Victor can feel Yuuri swell more and more at the base, and he practically mewls into the deeper stretch, intoxicated with it.  Soon, Yuuri’s going to be locked inside him, and it won’t be soon enough, because Victor is going to feel empty until then, is going to keep meeting Yuuri’s erratic thrusts until Yuuri’s knot swells enough to hurt as it pushes past the rings of him and marks him from the inside out.  Victor’s always used to getting what he wants, and now is no different, is even worse, because he’s being whittled down to the rawest version of himself, the most selfish, most primal version of himself, and all he knows in this moment is that he needs his mate pulse deep inside of him, because _mate_ , he thinks, _mate mate you are my mate_.

Yuuri shudders when his knot finally slides slowly inside him and catches, and he cries up into Victor’s mouth with the sensation.  “Can’t believe you,” he says, or Victor thinks he says, he’s not sure, he’s just focused on the way Yuuri’s knot makes him feel like he goes on forever, makes him finally feel complete.  The thing he was searching for when he first thought of taking a break from competition, this was it, the feeling of another person burying themselves inside him and carving a place for themselves there.  Yuuri sounds shy, sounds broken when he ask, “feel okay?”

“Yes,” Victor sighs, sinking more and more into the stretch.  “Touch me?  Touch me.”

“Of course,” Yuuri says, and he slides them both down the headboard so he can fuck down into Victor and get a hand on his dick.  Victor almost cries when he does, Yuuri’s fist sliding down his head to get wet with precome, and then aggressively jerking him with each thrust.  It’s that, and the way that Yuuri’s biting his own lip, clearly trying to keep his own orgasm from rolling through him, that gets Victor coming messily all over his own chest with a sob.  Yuuri shakes at the sight and leans down and bites hard into Victor’s collarbone to stifle his own cry as he finally unloads into Victor, heavy, long pulses filling and filling him.  Victor feels heavy with it, temporarily satiated as Yuuri continues to come and gasp shakily with his teeth buried in Victor’s skin.

“Yuuri,” Victor says, their chests rising and falling together like the tide.  Yuuri buries his arms under Victor to hold them even closer together, hearts beating raucous and loud, the smell of Yuuri and Victor becoming its own new thing, the smell of YuuriandVictor heavy around them.  Victor can still feel Yuuri’s dick twitch idly inside him, knot still binding them.

“I thought,” Yuuri slurs, post-come high settling in his muscles as he relaxes into Victor, “I thought I knew how beautiful you were, but this, you right now?  God, Victor,” and he kisses him again.  


* * *

 

Three days in, and they’re still in China, though they’re both coming down.  

“Hey,” Victor says, when Yuuri crawls into bed next to him sore and content, sleepy-eyed with a bottle of water.  He tips it to Victor’s lips to let him drink, and Victor greedily accepts the attention.  
  
“Hey,” Yuuri says.  He looks shy again, too sweet to be the alpha that made Victor beg for his knot over and over, fucked him on every piece of furniture erratically at first, and then slower, deeper, let their sweaty bangs stick together as they kissed hungry and slow.  “Hey.”


	2. Chapter 2

It’s Yuri’s first season on suppressants.  He’s surprised when his heat hits two days before the Grand Prix Final, and he isn’t drunk on the come-fuck-me lust he’s known since he first presented as an omega three years ago.  Instead, he’s fully conscious, with the same energy he would otherwise have to waste on an alpha, but any stupid sensibility to go out and get bred feels muted, like how his grandpa always wraps his pocket watch in a handkerchief.  He feels protected, for the most part.

His fans are more aggressive than usual in Barcelona.  The Yuri’s Alphas group has always been unsettling to him, but there’s something more tangible and ugly he can sense out during his first heat, something primal that reeks of intent.

He ducks down an alleyway to get away from them when sightseeing, but there’s an inescapable fear already burrowing in his chest.  He feels cornered.  He feels like an animal.  He starts to feel hyperfocused on what’s underneath the blanket of suppressants, the urge to keen into any and all sensation and get lost.

Maybe that’s why he doesn’t hear Otabek pull up on his motorbike.  

“Are you coming, or not?” Otabek is saying.  There’s already a helmet in his hands.  Yuri feels flushed, embarrassed, too young and caught up in himself to stay safe.  He’s always learned his lessons the hard way.

“Fine,” he manages, getting on the back of Otabek’s bike and strapping the helmet on underneath his chin.  He can hear the Yuri’s Alphas come around the corner as Otabek kicks off and away.

“How did you find me?” he asks, when they’re deeper into the city, stopped at a red light.  Otabek glances back at him, expression neutral.

“I could smell you,” he says.  His voice is a low rumble, like his motorcycle engine underneath them.

Yuri, in a rare moment, curls in on himself, self-conscious.  He’d made the effort to use masking soaps with his suppressants, but he knows they haven’t been entirely effective.  “Am I that bad?” he asks.

“Not to most,” Otabek replies.  The light they’re stalled at turns green.  “But to me, yes.”

“What!” Yuri shouts over the rev of the engine, gripping at the seat to steady himself.  “Why?”

“Because!” Otabek shouts back.  “I’m your mate.”

 

* * *

 

Yuuri buys them rings.  It’s the second ring he’s given Victor, the first being an uneven, oval bite mark on the collarbone above Victor’s heart where he claimed him.  It burns underneath his peacoat as Yuuri slides on the new ring, the golden one on his shaky hand in front of a cathedral.  

Yuuri’s not direct about his feelings most of the time.  He doesn’t always sleep in the same bed as Victor.  All of his touches hovered before they landed the days after Victor’s heat, as if he wasn’t sure, as if he wasn’t allowed, as if Victor hadn’t just opened up and invited him inside.  Sometimes when Victor is in his space, what should be _their_ space, Yuuri has despair roll off him in waves so thick that Victor can taste it in the air.  

But then he buys Victor a ring, and he buys one of his own, and he presses his lips to the heavy wool that covers the bite mark he left a month ago like a promise, and Victor can’t help but hope.  It’s a hard gesture to misinterpret.  Maybe Yuuri does things quietly, tries not to draw attention to them, like the way he doesn’t mark Victor in public; he wants to keep Victor to himself, he wants to keep what they have private and theirs and no one else’s, and something about that makes Victor’s heart feel paper thin beating in his chest.

The next morning he gets up early--he always gets up early, and Yuuri sleeps enough for the both of them, but until this year, he’s only woken up early for the sake of competition and maintenance of a certain lifestyle.  He doesn’t have to maintain that anymore, and just wakes up early out of habit most days, but the morning after Yuuri puts a ring on his finger, he untangles himself from Yuuri and slips out early with purpose.  

He goes to the drugstore and buys a pregnancy test.  He should have bought one before they left Hasetsu.  It’s been an exercise in self control not to obsess about the fact that Yuuri could have done more than bond with him the first night of his heat, or the second, or third, and it’s been another exercise completely to tamp down the unexpected want that wells up inside him whenever he gives himself the chance to briefly consider it.  

It would be the definitive end of his competitive career that everyone has been waiting for.  Victor would welcome it.  

When he’s walking back to the hotel from the drug store, he takes the path that runs along the beach.  The seagulls remind him of St. Petersburg.  Then they remind him of Hasetsu. They remind him of home.  

He doesn’t notice Yuri has been following him until Yuri kicks him in the back to get his attention.  

“Victor Nikiforov is dead,” he says from behind Victor.  He’s so young.  He’s never been able to hide when he’s scared.  Victor turns around, and Yuri instantly sees the nondescript brown paper bag tucked under his arm and spits.  “You’re no better than anyone else, letting an alpha breed you.  _T_ _ame_ you.”

They used to call him untameable, like it was an extension of his full name.  He used to be proud of that when he was Yuri’s age too.  Sometimes he misses the simplicity of being young, but he doesn’t miss the fear, and he doesn’t miss having to be brave despite it.  He smiles.  “Did you want to compete against me?  I can probably make it to Europeans without showing if you’re desperate.”

“Don’t be so arrogant,” Yuri says.  He keeps looking at Victor’s stomach, the unspoken third party, grimacing.  “Who would look up to you now that you’ve just become like everyone else?  You’re no one special.  If you came back now, you’d just be a disappointment.”

Victor grabs him by the chin so he can force Yuri to look into his eyes instead of at his stomach.  

“I’m going to win the gold medal,” Yuri says, mouth pinched at the cheeks by Victor’s grip.  His hand is steady.  “You’ll see exactly what the life you chose was worth over this.  Let go of me.”

He swipes at Victor’s arm, and Victor lets go easily.  It’s okay to be afraid, he reminds himself.  It’s okay not to know, until you do, and even then it can still be terrifying.  Even Yuuri can be terrifying, he thinks with a fraction of uncertainty.  Yuri is already walking away and Victor is happy to let him.  The bag underneath his arm crinkles a little as he secures it against his side like a reminder.  

 

* * *

 

He plans to wait for after the short program that night to take the test, but then he has to piss, and he thinks why not? Because he’s so anxious, he’s shaking with it, like Yuuri putting a ring on his finger all over again.  Yuuri knocks on the door while he waits for the result, sitting on the sink and feet pressed into the hotel bathtub across from him, flexing and unflexing his toes.  He lets Yuuri in.

“Hey,” Yuuri says sleepily, scrubbing at his eyes.  He’s not wearing his glasses, and Victor realizes he’s left them in here.  He hands them over while Yuuri leans in, eyes closed, pressing a kiss to his neck.  “Thanks.  What are you doing in here?”

Victor nods at his toes, where he’s placed the pregnancy test.  Time’s almost up.  He hesitates to lean over and pick it up.  Yuuri sucks in a breath.

“Really?” he asks.  His voice cracks.  “You are?”

“Well, I’m waiting to see,” Victor says.  He tries to sound casual.  He thinks it works.

“Oh,” Yuuri says.  “Can I wait with you?”

It’s a comfort he doesn’t expect.  Yuuri’s got his hand around his wrist, is pushing himself up onto the countertop to sit next to Victor.  Last night they had fallen asleep spooned together naked, after Yuuri had fucked him slow and steady on his side.  He’d pulled out, come all over Victor’s back, and dragged his fingers through it and up to Victor’s mouth.  He hadn’t said anything at all, just kissed the back of Victor’s neck while Victor had sucked each finger clean.  Everything between them, the best things, have always been unspoken.  Victor wants this to be another one of those things.

“How long?” Yuuri asks, and Victor’s attention snaps up from the test at his toes to Yuuri.  Yuuri clarifies, “How long do we have to wait?  Is it just uh, a few minutes?”

“Any second now,” Victor replies uneasily.  He reaches out for Yuuri’s hand, and squeezes his palm, rubs over the ring like a reminder.  Have you thought of this?  Have you thought of names?  He should have asked Yuuri these questions forever ago.  Yuuri hums and moves to wrap himself around Victor completely.  Months ago, Yuuri wouldn’t have let Victor touch him this way, but now Yuuri is the one who steps into his space.  There’s something comforting in that.

The timer goes off on Victor’s phone, and he and Yuuri lean forward as a unit to pick the test up off the bathtub rim.

A minus sign stares back at them.  He’s not pregnant.  

Victor feels something delicate crumble around a new pronounced emptiness inside him.  Yuuri says nothing, just presses a kiss to his temple and squeezes his wrist.  

 

* * *

 

He wonders idly if Yuuri’s performance during the short program that night is affected by it.  It’s a day of disappointments to be sure, but he has faith that they can recover on and off the ice.  It’s a hope that Yuuri shatters when they return to the hotel.  

The test is still sitting on the countertop forgotten.  Victor gazes longingly while Yuuri pushes past him to throw it in the trash.  

“We need to talk,” Yuuri says.

“Yeah,” Victor says.  “We should shower first.  It’s been a long day.”

He expects Yuuri to shower with him, but Yuuri wants to shower alone.  Victor craves intimacy enough for the both of them.  When they trade out, Victor spends more time in the shower trying to breathe in the leftover smell of Yuuri than he does taking care of himself.  

As Yuuri’s coach, he wants to encourage him through the free skate tomorrow, and explain how Yuuri can make up for his performance in the short program.  As Yuuri’s mate, he wants to know where Yuuri is, so he can meet Yuuri there.  As Yuuri’s omega, he yearns for some form of solace, some kind of tenderness.  

Instead, Yuuri asks him for an ending.  

“I was so worried when I saw the pregnancy test,” he says.  “I would have never forgiven myself for doing that to you.”

“I thought you wanted me to,” Victor tries to say, but maybe he hadn’t remembered correctly?  He was so sure that Yuuri had whispered it into him a hundred times or through his heat, how he was going to put a life inside of him.  “I thought you wanted this.”

“Victor?” Now Yuuri sounds confused.  “You would have to stop competing. I could never ask that of you.”

“I already  _stopped competing,_ " Victor says, and he’s proud when it comes out just as sharp as intended.  Yuuri flinches, like a deer to a gunshot.

“But you had said,” he tries, desperately looking for an end to his own sentence.  “You were the one who always wanted to go until the Grand Prix Final.  I’m not going to keep you any longer than that, Victor.  You don’t--you don’t  _belong_ to me.  I don’t own you.”

Every word out of his mouth is like a pull at Victor’s string, and Victor feels completely unraveled.  _Of course I do_ , he wants to say,  _I’m yours, you claimed me_. The mark on his chest stings fiercely into the towel draped over his shoulders.  He wants to ask Yuuri what he thinks they are, exactly.  

“What do you think you’re keeping me from?” Victor asks.  He’s crying.  It’s awful.  Crying is one of the few things he’s never been good at.  “Why do you think I would want to be anywhere that you aren’t?”

Yuuri doesn’t have an answer for him.  He seems just as lost and confused as Victor feels.  When they fall asleep that night, it’s on opposite sides of two mattresses pushed together.  

 

* * *

 

Yuuri skates the final free skate of his career to prove he didn’t steal Victor away from the rest of the world to tame him.  He still believes, even after all this time, that Victor belongs to the ice more than he belongs to anyone else.  He wants that to come through in his performance, he wants to pay tribute to the person Victor is, the strength only an alpha can know from knowing their omega.  He hopes it comes across, finishing the performance with only eyes for Victor.  The rest of the arena fades away.

He breaks the world record.

“As your coach and choreographer, I can’t be more proud that you broke my world record,” Victor says.  “As your mate, I’m overwhelmed.  As your competitor, I look forward to surpassing you at Worlds.”

Yuuri looks more alive hearing him say that than he looked when he heard his own score.  “So you’ll stay?  You’ll come back to competing?”

“Under a few conditions,” Victor says.  

 

* * *

 

The biggest condition is that when Yuuri finally does beat Victor, that Yuuri will allow him to retire.  

They stay close to each other at the banquet, shoulders pressed together from the start.  Yuuri should be talking to the sponsors that he danced half-naked circles around and sprayed with champagne last year, but instinct has him possessively clinging to Victor like a prize away from everyone else.  

“I should have never,” he’s saying.  He hasn’t had as much champagne as he had last year, but he’s had enough.  “I can’t believe I would try to--you know I never, ever mean what I said.”

“I know,” Victor says solemnly in reply, even if he didn’t.

“I just, I think I got so used to not letting myself want, I got so used to telling myself what I did and didn’t deserve, and I never thought in a million years I could, or would deserve someone as amazing as you.”  He’s babbling.  

“I know,” Victor says again.  “You do.  You deserve the world.”

“And then you just say shit like that--” Yuuri’s voice wobbles.

“Don’t cry,” Victor says.  “We’re in public.  And I’ll start crying.  And now you know I’m an ugly cryer.”

“You’re not an ugly anything,” Yuuri says, fiercely.  “How dare you.”

Victor chokes out a soft laugh and pulls Yuuri into him.  Yuuri’s face is pressed into his neck, against his scent gland, and Victor strokes the back of his head encouragingly thinking,  _can you smell me? Can you smell us?  Here is where you live._

“There are things more exciting in this world to me than just competing,” he says.  It doesn’t encapsulate a fraction of how he feels, but he doesn’t know if there are words for what he wants.  He feels self-conscious and greedy, but he doesn’t know how else to ask.  “There are things I want more, Yuuri.”

Yuuri is quiet.  After a second, he raises his hand to rest on Victor’s collar bone, right above his heart.

Yuri makes a disparaging noise in the back of his throat from across the banquet hall watching them.  The phantom weight of gold around his neck feels too light.  His suppressed heat had given him the extra stamina he needed to execute both his short program and free skate at maximum difficulty, but it had also caught Otabek’s attention and found them at the top pillars of the Park Güell Municipal Garden.  

Otabek, standing at his side, hums.  “They’re hard to ignore.  I can see what you meant, earlier.”

When they had been overlooking Barcelona together days ago, watching the sun go down like honey unfurling from a spool, Yuri had tried to reject any romantic overtones and shoved both hands in his back pockets like an absolute and said, “Just because we’re mates, doesn’t meant anything.  I’m not going to throw my career away to be some housebound omega.”

He had meant, I’m not going to be Victor Nikiforov--I’m not going to be the omega he was, and I’m not going to be the omega he’s become.   _I am my own_ , he had pleaded with his own rigid body.

“Why would I want you to be a housebound omega?” Otabek had asked him then.  He still looks cautious now, a navy blue wool suit filling out every hard curve that Yuri’s ever imagined his mouth around.  He had said,  “You’re my best competition.”

Yuri’s mouth curls with defiance as they both continue staring at Victor and Yuuri across the banquet, the way they place their hands unseen and press their noses into each other casually.  It would be nice.  “They’re shameless,” he spits out.

“Well,” Otabek says.  Fresh off the ice and out of the shower and Yuri can still pick up leather grease and motor oil on him, the magdalenas and black coffee he had for breakfast underneath his fingernails and the smell of the small finger foods being passed around currently by the waitstaff.  It feels intimate.  Being able to pick out such small things lingering on Otabek makes Yuri feel important, and he tries to not think about what that means.  “We won’t be like them.”

In his own way, Otabek is a romantic.  He says the things that Yuri wants to hear, does things that Yuri wants to do.  He held out his hand at the entrance of Park Güell and said, “so?  Will you be my mate or not?” like Yuri had a choice.  And Yuri saw then, and he sees now, that maybe mates aren’t some disgusting biological ball-and-chain propaganda.  Maybe it’s something impossible to do with the soul.  The youngest part of himself that he pretends to ignore likes the idea.  It was that part of him that had clasped Otabek’s hand in his own and said, “okay, _mates_ ,” like it was a foreign word Otabek had just taught him and he was trying it out for the first time.  

He likes the weight of it in his mouth when he’s referring to Otabek, but he’s protective of it, doesn’t want the rest of the world to hear it or see it and think they _know_.  He’s not like Yuuri and Victor, putting on a disgusting show.  Together, he thinks, he and Otabek are going to prove to the world something Victor Nikiforov never could.  

**Author's Note:**

> come kinkshame me and get weird on [tumblr](http://dadvans.tumblr.com/).


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